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Julia Bayly is a reporter at the Bangor Daily News.
It’s been a sad several days for Parrot Heads. Late Friday news broke that our troubadour and the mayor of Margaritaville Jimmy Buffett had died, apparently from skin cancer. I’m not alone in thinking the man and his music were immortal. Nor am I alone in having my own Buffett memories.
I was in high school when I discovered Buffett in the mid-1970s back in Portland, Oregon. That’s also when I went to my first Buffett concert.
Not content to simply be a Parrot Head, I desperately wanted to meet the man himself.
Over the following four decades and changes in latitudes, I’d come achingly close.
Covering an international sled dog race in Quebec, I was so certain he’d be there to cheer on the Jamaican team, which he sponsored. I got to meet the Jamaican mushers, but Buffett was a no show.
When he played his first concert in Bangor in 2016, his limo drove past one of the scores of tailgating parties that pop up wherever he’s performing. I caught a glimpse of his arm as he waved to his fans. I missed him again when he played here last summer.
Then there were the times when I lived in Fort Kent, and he stopped to refuel his small plane in the Northern Aroostook Regional Airport, flying in and out before the coconut telegraph could broadcast his presence.
Then, Paris.
For years, every September Jimmy Buffett and his Coral Reefer Band played over four or five days at La Cigale. It’s a smallish concert hall in the Pigalle Quarter, an area most known for the iconic cabaret Le Moulin Rouge.
Jimmy Buffett and Paris is a match made in heaven, and at the urging of my friend Kim, in 2018 I purchased tickets and I was off to the city of lights, Kim in tow.
Just knowing that Jimmy Buffett and I were breathing the same, rarified Paresian air was enough.
Almost.
At one point, Kim and I were bicycling around Versaille and our guide pointed out we were passing the fancy golf course hosting a celebrity tournament. Now, I had seen on Jimmy Buffett’s social media account that he was attending that tournament.
I stopped and gazed at the 15-foot concrete wall separating me from him. Clearly reading my mind that was gauging my odds of scaling that wall, Kim shot me a stern look and shook her head.
So near and yet so far.
The next day we headed to the concert. We emerged from The Metro near La Cigale and were instantly surrounded by hundreds of Parrot Heads dressed in an array of tropical attire.
And there, the stars, planets and constellations aligned.
As we made our way to the theater, Kim suddenly grabbed my arm and pushed me up a side street, saying, “It’s him!”
Over the sea of tie-dye clad fans, she had spotted Jimmy Buffett walking into a side door of La Cigale. There was a small knot of people around him — maybe a dozen or so — and he was exchanging kind words with them.
When we got there, I did the only thing I could think of, given my brain had pretty much frozen. I blurted out, “I came all the way from Bangor, Maine, to see you in Paris!”
Somehow, that cleared a path and I found myself next to JImmy Buffett, who kindly and graciously put his arm around me and let me take a selfie.
Then, he was gone and Kim managed to catch me before my knees totally gave out.
That one brief encounter confirmed what I had heard — that Jimmy Buffett loves his fans as much as we love him.
From there we went to a small cafe for a drink and, like all the cafes around La Cigale, margaritas were on special. We each ordered one.
They arrived not looking or tasting like any margarita Kim and I had ever had. To me, it tasted way better. It was only when I was on my second one I realized we were drinking mint juleps.
Given that the owner of the cafe was mystified by the entire Parrot Head phenomena going on around her, I could only surmise she had Googled “margarita” and “mint julep” was next to it alphabetically, so that’s what she was serving.
So there I was, in my favorite city, with my bestie, sipping my favorite cocktail and realizing after 41 years, the Jimmy Buffett watch had finally paid off.
Like a lot of people around the world, I’ve been streaming Jimmy Buffett’s music almost non-stop since I heard of his passing. God, his songs make me smile. The man was not immortal, but his music certainly is.
So, I invite you to take a moment to raise a margarita, mint julep or whatever your beverage of choice, to the man whose songs taught us all to let those winds of time blow over our heads and that it’s far better to die while you’re living than live while you’re dead.
Fins up.
